


Thursday Night Supper Club

by intrikate88



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrikate88/pseuds/intrikate88
Summary: Being an ocean away isn't much of a barrier. Even MIB agents with no life and no chill need to have dinner sometimes.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Thursday Night Supper Club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meridian_rose (meridianrose)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/gifts).



It’s less than a week after everything with the Hive, with High T, with being promoted to a full agent and her whole career laid out in a shining path before her, when M looks up from a stack of intelligence reports from the analysts and sees H standing in front of her desk, hands jammed into his pockets as he rocks back and forth on his heels. “Hey, you hungry?” he says, skipping any kind of polite greeting. 

M raises her eyebrows. “Do you… like, have an assignment? Here?”

“Oh, no,” he answers, beaming. “Nah, just had a free evening, thought I would see if you wanted to get some dinner.”

“What time is…” M starts, then checks the clock on her computer. “It’s one in the morning in London, H.”

“Alright, you caught me, I had a date, it went poorly, I didn’t get to eat.”

“So you hopped on our for-official-business-only trans-Atlantic shuttle to get pizza?”

“Nah, not pizza. There’s this great all-day breakfast place in Greenwich Village.” He stills. “If you want to, I mean, I’m sure they’ve given you plenty of work after... everything.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot to do,” she responds, hesitating as she casts a glance over her desk. She can barely see the surface for all the reports on it. “Actually, you know what? A couple hours aren’t going to be a problem, and I’ve been sitting here reading too long anyway.” She stands and grabs her coat. 

“Alright!” H says, breaking out in a grin. She’s heard other people compare him to a golden retriever, and there is something pure and joyful about how he expresses himself. Maybe their jobs are constantly telling lies, but he is genuine at a level apart from all of that.

“You need to take a break from all those files, or else reading them might make you want to neuralize yourself so you can quit,” H suggests as they step into the elevator. 

M shrugs. “I actually kind of like reading them,” she says. “When I was trying to find MIB, I read a lot of government documents, and it became like reading a mystery novel and drawing the real story out of the official language. I mostly found evidence of Roscosmos officials embezzling, and plenty of industrial espionage, but it’s still all interesting.” She catches his extremely doubtful side-eye. “Look, I also didn’t have a life, I’m obviously living with a different definition of fun.”

“Somebody needs to,” he concedes diplomatically, and they emerge from the dingy office building completely at odds with its sleek interior.

Later, as H finishes shoveling a truly astounding amount of eggs, sausage, and pancakes into his face, and M polishes off the last bite of her more plausible waffle, she leans back in the booth. “So how’s the whole running-the-whole-branch thing working out?” 

H shrugs. “Great, you know, always thought I’d make it to this one day, so it’s good. Agent C is still a pain in my arse.” 

“What’s his deal now?” M asks. “He was almost nice about helping us last week.”

“He keeps saying that the recommendation High T made to O was from before my, and I quote, ‘brain damage’,” H replies, making a face. 

“H, that’s awful,” M says, leaning forward. 

H looks troubled a moment, but then waves a hand and the brief appearance of tension leaves his face. “Yeah, he’s just jealous I get the big office. And the paperwork. He likes the paperwork.”

“Yeah, well, who doesn’t?” M says, letting him off the hook for sharing what he feels about that. They’re close, after everything, but maybe not that close. Maybe not that easy with handling each other when it isn’t life or death. She sips her coffee —caffeinated, she has at least three hours left of work to do before going home to sleep in a bed before coming right back, and she sure didn’t overstate how nonexistent of a life she had— and asks, “They wiped our identities, are we committing tax fraud?”

H considers, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of her bacon that she didn’t finish. “We can’t owe taxes if we don’t exist, right?”

“Okay, but where does the money come from? Do we just submit a budget justification to the UN and then neuralize them after we get the money?”

“It’s...” H starts, searching for words. “I don’t actually know, I haven’t gotten around to finding that out yet, the budget officer is trying to corner me for a meeting-“

“Which is why you’re across the Atlantic instead, gotcha,” M concludes. 

They talk a little more about the offices, the work, the consistently excellent suits that O wears and M admires to a level that she can’t quite tell if she just likes the aesthetic or has an actual damn crush on her boss. 

“So, next Thursday you come to London?” H says as they walk back to the office. 

“Hm, we’ll see,” M says. 

But as it happens, the next Thursday brings a cousin of Jimmy’s kidnapping the kids and taking them to London, so M follows them there and then after it’s sorted out, H says, “If you want to try the best chicken tikka masala you’ve ever tasted, there’s a place in Brick Lane.”

“I could be down for that,” muses M, and dodges the kick Timmy the alien aims at her knees. One of the London agents guides Timmy into the back of a van and slams the door shut. 

“Nothing to see, everyone, just an extraterrestrial kidnapping situation, but I can assure you it ended well and the children will be returned to their mother right away,” says H as he puts on his sunglasses. M slips hers out of her pocket and on to her face, just before he hits the neuralizer button. 

They both remove their sunglasses. 

“Why do you do that?” M asks, tucking her sunglasses inside her jacket. 

“Do what?” H drops the neuralizer into his pocket and turns to look at her. 

“Explain what’s going on to people, when we’re just going to erase their memories anyway. It sounds like some movie where the villain explains his dastardly plot before the hero defeats him.”

H shrugs. “What does it matter?”

“Well, it increases the odds that we’ll have to deal with another one of me, a hapless bystander who turned their entire life into an obsessive quest for the truth of the universe and thoroughly compromised operational security.”

He grins. “Maybe I want another one of you. You worked out well."

M adjusts her tie. “Damn right I did.”

The Thursday after that, a portal to another galaxy opens up in the Hudson River, swallowing a few tourist boats and giving their occupants the weirdest New York City trip they’ll ever forget. H directs all the dimensional researchers as they arrive and the tourists are loaded into buses going elsewhere, then tells M to handle everyone else coming and walks away to make a call. 

“I had to reschedule a date,” he comments upon his return. 

“I didn’t ask,” M responds. 

“I met a Celiobore bartender last week, they were working at a pub and knocked out two Baissengers who got rowdy just as I got there. Had a cricket bat in each tentacle, I asked them out on the spot.” 

“I hate myself for saying this, but didn’t you have a tentacled Hastaroni girlfriend already?”

H shrugs. “Things got awkward, we aren’t together.”

“Ah, sorry,” M says, grimacing and trying to avoid imagining in what scenario _awkward_ and _tentacles_ would clash. 

“No worries, she wasn’t out to her family as being into humans and other aliens,” H says, and shrugs again. “Anyway, Celiobores and Hastaronis are both a night that’s going to end in tentacles, but in my experience the Celiobores are more sensitive lovers.”

M gags loudly and extensively. “I didn’t like the word lovers already! This is so much worse!”

H laughs, and bumps her arm. “Burgers? On me?”

“Oh god yes,” says M. “You owe me.”

Two weeks after that, Thursday night finds them at a sushi restaurant in London. “I’ve been talking to O about what comes next in my career, what I could specialize in, and… it’s really hard to think about, I guess. I’m not sure what I want.”

“It’ll probably find you,” H suggests. “Not quite ’the universe will lead you where you need to be’ but it might make itself clear without your help.” He considers for a moment. “Or you might just get promoted to leadership if your predecessor gets possessed by an alien entity.”

“I’ve spent my whole life looking for this job, this place,” M says slowly. “I found it. So now what?”

H carefully stacks wasabi and ginger on top of a salmon roll. He doesn’t look at M as he says, “I changed, apparently. And I don’t remember how I was before or what made me different afterwards, even though everyone else seems to. Now I’m in charge of this branch, so how do I know what I’m supposed to be like now?"

“I don’t think there’s an answer. Cause we can’t go back before the Hive. You just have to… pick a next person to be, I guess.”

He looks up from his plate. “And you have to pick your next great mystery to solve.” He grins. “I’ve got plenty for you to choose from, now that I have access to all the classified files.” 

M is contemplating how to break it to H that that’s a terrible violation of security protocols but she could be convinced to be very into that idea, when there’s a small bit of pressure on her leg and then Pawny leaps up onto the table. 

“My queen! I just flew here by drone and I do not recommend it, it was terrifying and I nearly went splat on the side of three separate buses,” Pawny announces. M puts out her hand for him to climb onto and lifts him up. 

“Pawny, why did you fly a drone here?”

“This guy,” Pawny says, gesturing elaborately towards H, “needs to get back to the office and deal with an Indranian Jelly that’s gotten loose and started impersonating everyone. And you, my queen, I just wanted to ask if I could come live with you, since I’m tired of babysitting him.”

“Shit,” H says, then eats a bite large enough to make him look like he should be on a poster about choking hazards. “Alright, I’m done, let’s go.”

They stride out of the restaurant —cool as hell in their suits, M notes, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever be over being able to finally wear the suit, even if it’s no longer the only question she needs an answer to— and M nudges H as they wait for a cab to take them back to the office. “What do you think, H? Am I keeping a close enough eye on you once a week that Pawny doesn’t need to stay?”

He wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Just keep coming back, and we’ll see, hm?”

“Give the queen some personal space, _god_ ,” Pawny says with exasperation, and M laughs. 


End file.
